Sylvain Cappell was the first-born to Holocaust survivors in Belgium in 1946. Two grandparents and several uncles & aunts were killed at Auschwitz. His parental family emigrated to the U.S. in 1950. He graduated from Yeshiva Salanter in the Bronx and then from Bronx Science in 1963; that year he was the top national scholarship winner in the National Science Talent Search. He obtained his B.A. (Summa Cum Laude) from Columbia in 1966 in math (& with enough literature courses for a major) and obtained his Ph.D. in math from Princeton in 1969 (6 years out of high school) and until 1974 held faculty appointments there.
Since 1974 he has been at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, a full professor since 1978, and in 2008 was appointed by NYU to its Silver Professorship. He has also held visiting professor appointments at Harvard, the U. of Penn., Weizmann Institute of Science, the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France and the Institute for Advanced Study.
His over 120 scientific publications include research works on topology and its connections to many other areas of math. He has been awarded both Sloan Foundation & Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships and has given invited addresses to both the American Mathematical Society and the International Congress of Mathematicians and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has chaired and has served on external review committees for leading universities (e.g., Caltech, Princeton, U. of Penn., etc.), foundations (e.g., the Rothschild Foundation, in Jerusalem), government science agencies & research institutes in the U.S. and abroad. He served for a dozen years as an officer of the American Mathematical Society, including as Vice-Pres. and received its National Service Award. At NYU he has twice been Chair of the Faculty Senate.
Prof. Cappell has supervised over 20 doctoral theses at Princeton and at NYU. His former students have chaired leading math departments in the U.S. & Europe (e.g., U. of Chicago, U. of Heidelberg) and former postdocs of his have positions in leading departments. His extensive involvements in math education of young people include serving from their inceptions on the Advisory Council of the National Museum of Mathematics and as advisor to the Math-for-America Foundation. He has long mentored math gifted students of all ages in the tri-state region.
Prof. Cappell served as faculty advisor to Jewish student organizations at Princeton U. and at NYU. He has long served as an officer of various Jewish organizations, including the Tribeca Synagogue and is actively involved in other synagogues, including the Greek Synagogue downtown and Cong. Mount Moses at Lake Waubeeka, CT. He was an organizer of a multi-day academic conference at NYU, sponsored jointly with the Folkesbiene National Yiddish Theater, on the history of Yiddish theater.
Prof. Cappell is now completing his 51th year teaching & conducting scientific research at NYU. He is fluent & lectures in several languages, including French (his first language) & Hebrew and knows Yiddish. He & his wife Amy, who taught art at Stuyvesant H.S. for 30 years, live in Greenwich Village. Their 4 children attended Jewish schools here in the NYC area, as did grandchildren.
